Discuss in detail how one programme offers audience pleasures (15 marks) - Bad Education

Bad Education is a sitcom set in a school, the characters are the same every time, this enables the audience to form a bond with both the students and the staff to the extent where they have an understanding of their personality. This feature of familiarity is an audience pleasure that encourages the audience members to watch further episodes and draws them into the programme. Even before the end of the first episode the audience is aware of the main character Alfie Wicker's personality and understands his foolish and immature nature. In one episode Alfie hides in a toilet cubicle to graffiti on one of the walls with something that would offend the deputy head, Miss Pickwell, his enemy. This action is immature for a teacher to do but by now the audience isn't surprised that he would do something like this due to what they have seen him do before, for new audience members they are given an insight into his character. When he leaves the toilet cubicle he is bullied by a group of students and again, as a act of foolishness he allows the students to bully and blackmail him, he goes out and buys them cider to replace one that had been confiscated; this pushes the boundaries of a student and teacher relationship. Later on he interrupts one of his colleagues who is dealing with an issue that the parents have, straight away the audience knows that the situation is going to go wrong and that he will say something stupid. This adds to the audience pleasures that they have as they enjoy to see him fail and can laugh at his expense without feeling guilty, especially as he put himself in that situation. Another form of audience pleasures that the programme uses is transgressive pleasures, this is shown in many ways by all characters but the staff in particular. In one particular scene a group of female students are performing to teachers to an inappropriate song in revealing clothing, the head teacher is dancing along showing that he approves of the sexualisation of the students. There are also occasions where the staff are racist or use sexual references, all of these shock the audience to the point where it is funny because it is pushing boundaries that they aren't used to seeing but they are not done in a way to deeply offend anyone. The show is able to push boundaries as they don't need to please big advertising companies because the BBC is a public service broadcaster so they don't have any advertisers. The audience also enjoy the sense of repetition and difference displayed in the show, in one particular episode toilet humour is used, although this isn't regularly used on the show there is always a common theme of old school and immature humour that follows along those lines.